The
Supersensible Human Being
Berlin, 18 April 1918
Because one has to consider the supersensible human being as
the core of the human being, it is quite natural that the
knowledge of the supersensible human being is human
self-knowledge. However, with this human self-knowledge you
face a very strange paradox. On the one side, you face the
necessity of understanding the human being as a supersensible
being; on the other side, any usual cognitive ability is bound
to the sensory appearance. What he grasps with his reason is
also bound to the sensory appearance. One could say without
thinking, self-knowledge demands the view of the human being
with cognitive abilities that are far away from his
consciousness at first. In so far as the human being becomes
aware of himself as a supersensible being, he has to
acknowledge in a certain sense that everything that he performs
in life arises from his supersensible being. On the other side,
one could say, everything that appears in his consciousness
appears sensorily “veiled” in a somewhat improper
sense. Hence, one misunderstands spiritual-scientific research
and speaking about the supersensible so easily and so often.
Since the today's considerations will show that one cannot
approach the true nature of the human being with the usual
abilities of the everyday consciousness. Yes, one has even to
say that that kind of knowledge which has developed so greatly
on scientific basis rather misleads concerning the
self-knowledge than to lead this self-knowledge in the right
way. Since just if the well-schooled scientific way of thinking
approaches the human self-knowledge, one notices that it can
fail too easily. We want to take an example as starting
point.
In
the very interesting booklet The
Subconscious Self and Its Relation to Education and
Health by Louis Waldstein (1853-1915) is talk of
various things that also strike the scientist if he gets to
know the human life in its development in the different
relations. We have spoken in a former talk about the
revelations of the unconscious, of the subconscious. The
example that I want to bring in is that of a naturalist, and
the way in which he speaks about that is completely scientific.
The author of this booklet wants to point to a certain place
how this subconscious being plays a peculiar, vague role.
Waldstein chooses the following example. He says, I stood
before the shop-window of a bookstore. Because I am a
naturalist, I just looked at a book about mollusks. At this
moment when I saw this book, I started smiling to myself, and I
was surprised why I did this, because a book about mollusks has
nothing humorous. — He continues: I closed my eyes to
investigate what maybe proceeded in my surroundings. When I
turned the view away from the book, I heard the tones of a
barrel organ quite soft in the distance. It played the melody
of a song that one played when I danced my first quadrille. At
that time, I did not care with which sympathies or antipathies
I met this melody; since I was occupied very much to make my
dance steps well arranged. At that time, I was not at all
especially careful on what entered half my consciousness
musically. Still the fact that I must smile standing before the
book about mollusks after decades proves that the impression,
which at that time that melody had done still, has continuing
effects; and if I had not closed my eyes, but had been content
with the astonishment, I would not have known then why I smiled
standing before the book.
One
realises how mysteriously such things have continuing effects
in the subsoil of the soul life, how much generally exists in
the human being that comes up only quite fantastically in the
consciousness; one realises how difficult it is to get to real
self-knowledge. Since to which danger do you expose yourself,
if you want to practise introspection? To the danger that you
have to deal with all possible completely blurred subconscious
things which you have maybe taken up decades ago which have a
lasting effect which work only in the deepest subsoil of the
soul like a mood that comes up then and nuances what you now
observe in yourself.
Waldstein and others bring in numerous such examples. You find
those also in my book How Does
One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?. Such
examples are very suitable to be rather careful about
introspection. Since even some people believe to get with
introspection also to a real knowledge of the human being. Some
people also believe while bringing up such memories from their
subconsciousness that they do all possible clairvoyant
discoveries.
Now
one has to be careful also in another respect. You can realise,
for example, that some who claim to figure this or that out by
their supersensible knowledge of their inside express this
supersensible knowledge in pictures which are got, for example,
from telegraphs or railways or as the case may be. From it, one
would see that the supersensible with its pictures had just to
wait to appear, until the railways were invented. Someone who
does not approach the supersensible research uncritically will
also be able to know easily how frivolously one proceeds in
this field now and again, and how it is really soothing that
thorough scientific thinking points to the fact that such
contents which somebody regards as revelation of higher worlds
sometimes are nothing but what the person concerned has taken
up once in any blurred way at a younger age
-
what he regards, however, as a
revelation what did not come to his consciousness at that
time
-
what changed in multiple way
-
what he does not recognise
again,
-
what now, which has come about in
supersensible way.
In
my book I have pointed out that, actually, everything works on
the human being and that sometimes in something that the one
regards as an inspiration is nothing but the transformation of
a shop sign at which he did not properly look when passing by
in the street, but which penetrated only into his
subconscious.
With it, one points to an area of human life that one has to
consider rather carefully and rather critically just by
somebody who seriously wants to expand his research to the
supersensible world. However, on the other side, all these
memories, these subconscious images point to something else, it
is as it were the side effect of something quite different.
There I have to return more exactly to something that I have
already mentioned here in the course of these talks: the
relation between memory and the usual mental pictures. A very
usual kind of thinking that has played a big role also in
science, in particular in psychology, is that the human being
has experiences while facing the outside world. These
experiences evoke mental pictures in him. Now he has these
mental pictures. After some time he “remembers.”
Now one imagines this process very often in such a way, as if
these mental pictures, which he had once and which he has
somewhere in the subsoil of the soul, come up again as
recollections in his consciousness. One thinks very often, more
or less consciously or subconsciously, that that which appears
in the recollection is nothing but the same mental picture
which one had once, and which was down there anyhow and comes
up again in the consciousness. However, someone who knows to
practise real observation in this field has to regard this way
of thinking as something rather childish and dilettantish.
Since if we face an outer phenomenon if we have an experience
of the smallest or biggest kind, which evokes perception and
mental pictures by the perception in us, this
“activity” — I want to call it provisionally
so — is accompanied by another activity of which we do
not become aware usually. This activity is yet another one; it
accompanies the conscious imagining activity and causes
something in us that leads to memory. However, you have to
observe properly. The most trivial observation in this area is
that if you consider the difference of imagining, which can be
completely easy, and memorising. Remember only what the young
people who have to “cram” for an exam have to do,
so that they have not only the mental picture, but also keep it
in mind. There quite weird performances are carried out
sometimes. Think of the play, which takes place between the
human hands and the head if anybody has to cram something. Of
course, that is only an outer sign of what I mean. But in truth
it is in such a way that during the imagining activity another
activity is still there which does not get to our consciousness
and exercises an effect on our organism which consists of
something quite different than of forming mental pictures.
Later if we remember that again which we have imagined once,
this mental picture completely originates anew. It originates
as it were from the “sign,” from the
“engram” — if I am allowed to use this
expression — which that activity can exercise which
accompanies the imagining activity on our organism. As we face
the object of the outside world and form, inwards directed, our
mental picture, we face our organs while remembering.
What happens there what is different from our imagining as the
outer object is different from our mental picture is changed
into the mental picture anew. Somebody who is able to observe
the organisation of the human mind and its effectiveness knows
that that which forms as a mental picture appears and
disappears, while it is imagined. If anything is reminded, the
mental picture has not slept down there and appears again, but
from something quite different that happens below in the
organism the mental picture is anew formed. What I want to show
there is that we have to see something in that accompanying
activity, which goes along with it, actually, in the subsoil of
our conscious life and is connected with something that always
emerges with the memories from our subconscious. As well as
everything that appears in the world has its concomitants which
appear like the caricature of the real now and again, is that
which I have mentioned from the writing by Waldstein also such
a concomitant of the quite normal regular way how the human
being works in the memories. I would like to say, what proceeds
subconsciously, so that the human being has a memory, appears
in such things if it overflows or if anything remains
indistinct or blurred like the sounds of a barrel organ that
still generate an effect making Waldstein smile. That which is
there rather conceals the things than that it explains them.
Since the point is that it is a very normal activity, which is
very necessary for the human being, namely that which forms the
basis of the human memory. This is something that accompanies
our whole conscious life perpetually, but we do not turn our
attention upon this accompanying activity in the usual life.
The accompanying activity is due to our organisation.
It
is a kind of touchstone of the real supersensible research to
consider such a thing like this accompanying activity forming
memory. Since that which normally works in the subconscious can
be changed into something conscious on the first level at
first. Changing something unconscious into something conscious
is one of the capacities that lead to the real investigation of
the supersensible. What remains usually subconscious must be
brought up in the consciousness. Thereby it already becomes
different. The exercises, which I have described in my book,
which one has to go through to put the soul in such a condition
that it can face the supersensible, consist of many things.
However, one can illustrate something elementary showing that
this first elementary is related to a quite normal activity
which remains, however, usually subconscious. One has to carry
out the activity consciously which is carried out there
unconsciously, but quite normally to form the memory. For that,
it is necessary that you are able to refrain from that activity
which causes the usual mental pictures bound to the senses. You
must be able to withdraw as it were from this imagining.
However, you are not able to do this if you cannot replace it
with another kind of imagining. You attain this, while you
focus on self-developed mental pictures that are easily
understandable.
I
say "easily understandable" mental pictures; this is
exceptionally important. Self-chosen, self-developed, easily
understandable mental pictures must be because just any
subconscious, everything about which one cannot know to which
blurred perception it is due must be removed. However, you
never are sure — one sees this from this example —
that this blurred, subconscious weaving of the soul life is
blanked out if you do not focus on a mental picture which you
can really figure out at the moment where you yourself have
formed it, so that you know, any part of this mental picture
has arisen from your immediate will which you have unfolded at
this moment. “Self-chosen” does not mean of course
“self-made;” you can get such mental pictures from
an experienced spiritual researcher, and he is able to know
best of all how they can be adapted to the individuality of the
human being concerned. However, it matters that you intermingle
the mental picture with the thoughts and experience in the soul
that you have nothing in the soul but this mental picture. It
also matters that these mental pictures occupy our
consciousness if possible in very versatile way so that this
mental picture is present in every atom, I would like to say.
This is particularly fulfilled if you take such mental pictures
in your consciousness that stimulate you to make the thoughts
versatile.
A
growing plant, for example, is a good mental picture; not
staring at something resting, but at something that is in
motion or that has any relations to each other. Thereby we are
protected that our consciousness becomes idle while staring at
the mental picture. Since it matters for the investigation of
the supersensible world that everything that is done as
preparation has to be done completely consciously from start to
finish that in no way the consciousness is anyhow darkened.
Hence, it belongs to the first requirements of the future
spiritual researcher that he eliminates everything from that
soul activity which should lead him to spiritual research
— of course, not from the remaining life — that can
decrease the consciousness anyhow. It is particularly important
that in this living in easily understandable mental pictures,
in this “meditating,” nothing prevails in the
consciousness that may darken it. It is the first requirement
that anything dreamy, all thoughts, arising from the inside,
which one likes, are eliminated from the preparations of
spiritual-scientific research. Furthermore, everything has to
disappear that could anyhow darken the consciousness of
percipience. What you want to aim at must not deal anyhow, for
example, with staring a luminous point by which one could get
to a certain hypnotic condition, or with that which some people
even feel as a rather nice preparation: looking at a
“crystal ball” and the like. The opposite of all
suggestive or hypnotic conditions you have to exercise if you
prepare yourself for spiritual research. You can learn from
that: if you often hear from people who are also
“followers” of spiritual science and say that you
have to lose yourself if possible eliminating the own being to
a dreamy “devotion,” then it is that
“spiritual science” which may cause a lot of ease
which does not at all lead, however, to the investigation of
the supersensible world.
I
have to draw attention sometimes to such things; since even
people who want to be serious critics of spiritual research
confuse it with its opposite. Even a critic (Max
Dessoir, 1867-1947, German philosopher) who has made
a great stir confuses this spiritual research with its
opposite, and he describes them in Beyond the
Soul (1917), with those phenomena which belong by no means
to the spiritual world according to the methods of spiritual
research. However, it is strange that just this critic brings
in an example of his own soul life that he continued speaking
for a while when he held a lecture and then only realised that
he had continued speaking without his thoughts having gone
along. You can be quite sure that such a lecturer has not
understood any trace of that which I mean here with spiritual
research.
Of
course, you have to develop that further what I have given now,
but it matters to emphasise the essentials. The essentials and
important of that what you experience internally this way is
the following:
While you evoke such mental pictures more and more in your soul
and mind how the soul is active different than with the outer
percipience, the big, important fact manifests itself to you
from a certain point on that you are now inside such a soul
activity which remains usually unaware and leads in the usual
life to the formation of memory. You have pushed one level down
as it were what you experience, otherwise, in the imagining.
You have not considered what you experience, otherwise, in the
imagining, and you have considered what accompanies this
imagining else. You have pushed your whole ego-consciousness
one level down where, otherwise, this is done what leads to
memory, and you get to know this way what takes place usually
perpetually below in the soul what you do not consider in the
usual consciousness. I have repeatedly shown also here what the
fact depends on that the human being is able to form memories.
Everybody knows what it means to the human being if his memory
power is disturbed pathologically for a time. You get to know a
level of soul experience which represents something
subconscious to the usual life, and which still cannot be
denied, because it is there in its effects which, however, is a
particular experience if you settle in that which you have
woken by meditating.
This experience is a shaking one for someone who generally has
a feeling of such things. You experience that you have reached
that level where memory lives that you have approached
something in your being that proceeds, otherwise, rather
unconsciously that normally never enters even approximately in
your consciousness by its nature. This memory-forming force is
related to the formative force in us in a way. Since while the
force of growth is far away from the usual imagining, it is
near by the memory-forming force. Always something immediately
grows together that is, otherwise, separated: the force of
growth and the memory-forming force to a compound thing which
you have in yourself and which you get to know this way. We
carry this perpetually in ourselves.
The
usual consciousness does not suspect at all that the same force
which accompanies the human being as force of growth, as
formative force is — increased and refined — the
same to which you appeal if you form memories. However, it is
something compound. If you get to know the thing, it presents
itself as something compound. Since you learn to distinguish
that which is combined as force of growth and as memory-forming
force; it is as it were a duality that co-operates as a unity.
While you dwell on the thing, you discover: what you bring up
as memory is, actually, subconscious knowledge, a deeper level
of consciousness in which our usual ego does not live. However,
this consciousness penetrates the force of growth.
The
force of growth and the memory-forming force face each other
closer than our conscious knowledge and the outer physical
world. However, our conscious knowledge of the outer physical
world is more distant from each other; we cannot build the
bridge from the one to the other. That which we want to get
from there, which we bring to mind by meditations, carries its
own object in itself, but it is something that is related to
our knowledge. We learn to figure a duality out. However, this
duality appears, the further you advance in your soul life,
very clear to the beholding consciousness. You behold the force
of growth this way. You behold it — to use a good old
quotation of Troxler (Ignaz Paul Vital T., 1780-1866, Swiss
physician and philosopher) — as the true human
corporeality compared with the physical corporeality. In our
usual consciousness, we perceive the physical corporeality.
This subconsciousness perceives this corporeality in us.
Do
not misunderstand me, I have called this corporeality the body
of formative forces in the magazine Das Reich. I called
it the “etheric body” previously. Because certain
people take exception to expressions, I have tried to come
closer with the term to that which it concerns and I have
called that which is closest to the physical body and
accompanies our whole life as formative- forces the “body
of formative forces.” One can call that which does not
live in our usual consciousness which is always closer to this
body of formative forces, and to which one gets by meditation
the “astral body” for certain reasons; but one can
also call it the “soul,” which works a level deeper
than the usual consciousness.
As
the chemist separates a compound substance into the different
elements, or as the physicist splits the white sunlight into
different colours, we have the nature of the human being
divided into the physical body that one perceives with the
outer senses, into the body of formative forces that is the
first supersensible member of the human being, and into the
astral body or soul that subconsciously knows about the work of
the body of formative forces, but shines in the usual
consciousness only in the memory pictures . From all that the
real ego is separated which swims on this triple human being,
which knows nothing about that which the soul knows about the
bodily, which separates, however, from the soul and which then
forms the usual consciousness, and which is spiritual. The fact
that this ego-being must be separated as a particular member
from the other members turns out only if you advance further
with the recommended exercises. I have described how one puts
self-formed, clear mental pictures into the soul. It is
advantageous if one takes versatile mental pictures and tries
to feel, to experience what can be just experienced resting in
such mental pictures.
These are two things. The one is that you become aware that
there is such a weaving and living in the human being as it is
similar to the memory formation. The other is what you
experience if you look internally at this experience. It is as
if you proceed in such a way that you form the mental pictures
on one side, the thinking on the other side, which becomes
memory then. This is a particular experience. Someone who goes
through it who trains himself as spiritual researcher in the
real sense knows that this is a particular experience. Since an
element stops from a certain moment on prevailing in this soul
life, which, otherwise, is significant always for our soul
life: the spatial element. If you reflect that in the usual
consciousness almost only spatial images are available, then
you realise how much the usual consciousness is dependent on
space. This experience, which attaches itself to such mental
pictures, as I have developed, causes gradually to know
yourself lifted out of space and being in only temporal
processes. This is like a significant progress of the human
soul life: to know yourself in the tides of time, because this
causes to figure the stream of time out really. I said, the
whole results in recognising the relationship of the memory
power with the forces of growth. You are put just in this.
Something else is still important. I said, it is a double: to
have these mental pictures — and to pay particular
attention on what you experience there, how you really
experience the mental pictures becoming versatile, the living
in time, since then you are with your ego in this imagining
life.
You
are not only in an imagining life, but also generally in a
life, which is mixed with the real forces working in time. Then
you have got at an ego-experience that is completely different
from the usual ego-experience. Someone who knows the usual
ego-experience by appropriate introspection knows how narrowly
it is bound to the human corporeality, and I have described
last time to which elements of the corporeality the ego is
bound at first: that it concerns equilibrium relationships, so
spatial relations. However, you cannot stay at this experience,
but you properly get into the course of time.
Very few people regard anyhow what I have indicated now. Thus,
some philosophers assume that our ego is that ego which remains
in any experience from birth to death. However, this weird
concept of the permanent usual ego as Bergson
(Henri B., 1850-1941) designed it can be easily disproved.
Every dreamless sleep disproves this assertion. This is why one
is not able to build up something on the usual ego-experience
if one wants to recognise the human being. However, one carries
the ego--experience into the course of time.
If
one carries the ego into the course of time if to the other
experience of the mental subconscious and the memory-forming
body this new ego-experience appears, then it does not count
any more that every sleep interrupts this ego-experience, but
then something else counts. Then turns out that with our
ego-idea also the following is associated.
I
have shown last time from which vague feeling this ego-idea
appears. It has to be inspired as it were. It is not there in
the dreamless sleep. How is it inspired? It is inspired when we
approach our corporeality with our soul again. Our corporeality
stimulates our ego in the usual consciousness from without. We
collide in the usual consciousness with our body; this
stimulates our ego-idea. This ego-idea must not be considered
as something permanent. However, with that which I have
portrayed as new ego-experience the situation is quite
different. This lives in the tides of time, it is lifted out
from space. This is just inspired, while the human being
inspires the experience at one moment in time and not with the
spatial collision with his corporeality, but in the collision
with the experience of another moment in time. This
ego-experience about which I have spoken now is identical with
the fact that if I wake I collide in mysterious way with that
moment in time at which I have fallen asleep. This forms the
basis of the new ego-experience that we experience ourselves at
different, at consecutive moments in time that we bridge the
time, even if it is discontinuous if sleep disturbs it.
These are the essentials of this ego-experience. Because we
immerse the ego in the soul, as far as this is related with the
conditions of growth, thereby we immerse the ego itself in the
conditions of growth. We advance to that in the ego, which
accompanies us from birth to death; we penetrate into the
continual stream of ego-experience. What philosophy only
concludes else about which one only judges, this is
experienced. One defends himself even against the fact that
Eduard von Hartmann talks of the fact that if one wants to
observe a feeling it is disturbed and changes.
If
Eduard von Hartmann notices this, he just wants to exclude that
the ego can live in this stream of time. He wants to prove just
with it that for the ego-experience the stream of time gets
lost to him. However, it does not get lost, but is just gained
with it. Yes, someone who can practise introspection
spiritual-scientifically knows that the ego-experience that is
there at this moment interrelates with former moments in
time.
Do
not take it as tomfoolery or as boast, if I tell an own
experience which seems to be very simple if it is experienced
which shook me again recently. I finished a book in 1894 in
which I pointed out wholly philosophically that the human
thinking is already something spiritual: my Philosophy
of Freedom. At that time, I was a young man of 33
years. Now recently the necessity has arisen to work through
this book again, to go through everything again that penetrated
my soul at that time and to observe at the same time how the
ego-experiences of today relate to the quite same
ego--experiences of those days.
If
you succeed in realising how something similar appears in time
while experiencing again and encountering the revived
experiences as usually at awakening, then you can just realise
with such an example how the ego is inspired exactly the same
way as in the corporeality at awakening, while it meets
something of it again that existed in the stream of time.
Someone who cannot observe this does not imagine at all what he
experiences if he does not have the ego in the stream of space,
but if he is forced to think it according to the mental
pictures in the Philosophy of Freedom that many people
regard as “abstractions.” I call them the most
concrete, most living mental pictures because the Philosophy
of Freedom develops nothing but living concepts.
This is the ego-experience due to the interrelation of the one
moment in time with the other moment in time. There begins that
what you can pictorially call the transition to the inner
musical experience of the world. It is, as if you interrelate a
tone of a melody to the other tones of the melody if not only
this originates that the tone shakes the air as it were,
experiences itself in space, but if a tone interrelates with
the other tone. It is impossible actually to look different at
the inner weaving and living of this highest member of the
human being from to proceed to such a musical experience of the
one moment of time through the other.
The
whole human being is thereby divided into (1) the physical
body, (2) the body of formative forces working in the memory,
which spiritualises the body of formative forces like a
subconscious knowledge, (3) the actual soul or astral body, and
(4) the ego. Then we have tried to look at the supersensible,
and with it you have the complete human being. With it, you
also have the suggestion how you have to experience, so that
you can directly behold the permanent in the human being. There
is no interpretation or philosophical analysis of the usual ego
useful; you have to carry this ego into another sphere, you
have to experience it anew on quite different conditions. That
ego which you experience this way is an ego that is independent
from the spatial corporeality at the same time, and it can
gradually perceive, while you continue your exercises, that in
the tides of time which lives in the human being only
temporally, not spatially.
If
I am allowed to insert something for those who know of such
things: one has pointed out in the present philosophy that one
does not approach the soul if one wants to grasp it
substantially, but only if one grasps it as a passage through a
process. In particular, Wundt
(Wilhelm W., 1832-1920, German psychologist and philosopher)
pointed to that. However, Wundt pointed to the fact abstractly
that one does not approach the soul if one considers it as a
substance, but that one has to observe it in the living
process.
However, it does not concern to visualise it only in the mental
process by abstractions but to submerge with the own ego in the
mental process and to experience it. Then one can gradually
pursue this mental process also beyond those times in which it
is busy in the spatial-physical. If you have learnt to let
collide the experience of one moment in time with the other
moment, then you can also gradually develop the ability in
yourself to let collide the inner experience of the ego
generally with the stream of time where the spatial-bodily-has
only originated in the stream of heredity. Then the stream of
time extends beyond the spatial-bodily, then you behold in the
stream of time in which the ego weaves in the life before birth
and in the life after death.
To
somebody who experiences that which I have described now in
principle something occurs internally that one can compare with
the experience, which probably Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) might
have had when he stood at the beginning of the modern
scientific way of thinking and asserted this. The human beings
up to Giordano Bruno looked at the cosmic space, saw the blue
firmament and regarded it as a real border of space. It was
significant that in Giordano Bruno's soul the idea appeared
first: there is really nothing at all; only our view, only the
conditions of our sense perception cause that we see a blue
bowl there; in truth it extends to infinity, the blue firmament
is only a border of our view. This also applies to the
temporal. Birth or conception and death become the borders of
the temporal firmament at which we look which our sense. What
we regard as our world in which we live with our ego, with our
supersensible human being, this is beyond this temporal
firmament beyond death on one side, beyond birth or conception
on the other side. Today we face this great leap forward of the
human knowledge where in similar way as centuries ago the
spatial illusion was removed the illusion is now removed that
birth and death are borders beyond which one cannot get.
You
have to do this leap. Then it opens the view of the real life
of your supersensible being. However, you have to consider
particularly: someone who wants to become a spiritual
researcher as I have described here has to pursue with the
highest critical introspection always what could keep him from
coming objectively into this spiritual world. He can be very
easily kept from it. It is advantageous not to use mental
pictures for meditation, which evoke feelings and emotions.
Somebody who uses mental pictures, which excite him very
strongly, can deceive himself very easily. Hence, you should
avoid for the preparation that religious impulses are brought
in the exercises. Strange to say — it will be fine with
some people — those mental pictures are the very best
which touch us the least concerning our emotional life. If you
become engrossed in geometry in such versatile mental pictures
where the figures can accept different forms, or in such mental
pictures, as I have shown them in the Philosophy
of Freedom, then that furthers us in this field.
With it, I do not want to say that spiritual-scientific
research is not concerned with the religious life. However, it
concerns that one gets to that religious internalization and
deepening for which just spiritual science can also be the
preparation best of all because one does not take it as
starting point, but proceeds with very unemotional and
incurious mental pictures on the way of research, and if you
are in the spiritual world, the view which can already be a
mighty help just for the religious deepening comes to you from
this spiritual world. Thus, you have to use particular mental
pictures, which are not associated with the griefs and concerns
of human life and which you can easily understand. However,
these never are the mental pictures, which excite us easily,
because there everything imaginable appears from the
subconscious in the soul. One has to exclude this subconscious
above all.
You
really penetrate into a spiritual experience this way where you
can find that being in the human being only which lives in the
freedom of will which lives in the immortal soul being. Every
human being bears it in himself. However, you can recognise it
only in such ways as I have described.
In
the next talk, I want to go on talking from this point about
the important questions of the human soul life: about the
freedom of will and about the immortality of the soul. I want
to show how one advances from the supersensible human being to
a real conception of the life of this supersensible human
being, of the life in the real perpetuity, and the life in the
freedom of will. People have argued so much about freedom of
will and immortality because one did not want to get involved
with creating the necessary preparations first to enter the
field of human experience which you have to enter if you want
to gain a view of that from which only freedom of will
originates, and in which only that rests which goes through
births and deaths in the human being. You have to recognise
first how in the human life the temporal runs during this life
on earth. Then you also find the ways to get beyond this life
on earth.
Such research can become fertile for the most important, most
practical fields of life, for example, for education. One does
not at all consider this field from the temporal experience of
the soul, although one wants to make modern ideas fertile for
it today. Someone who can look from one time of human
experience to another finds a metamorphosing life in the soul
life. He finds, for example: if he has grown old and looks back
at former times and then at more distant times, and if he looks
not only outwardly, but experiences it internally, then he
notices how the inner mental object changes what originates
from an object of the soul life at a moment in time.
One
notices: what works in the childhood mainly as will what is
expressed as wish works in the later life in the experience of
life, works in the thinking. What we have later as fifty years
old humans as experience of life is a transformed will life of
our childhood. As the petal of the plant is a transformed green
leaf in the sense of the Goethean metamorphosis outwardly, but
as the leaf does not remain green, but becomes red with the
rose, that changes which is wish with the child into
experiences of life in the later age. And vice versa: what the
child thinks changes into willpower in the later life. If you
know this coherence, you can imagine how you can work on the
child!
If
you fulfil every senseless wish of a child and induce it that
it atomises its will in all directions, then you make it
relatively idiotic early in later age because the atomised will
cannot change into experience of life which expresses itself in
a quiet life of thought later. — This metamorphosis of
the inner life manifests itself to spiritual beholding as
usually spatial relations manifest themselves. One also learns
to recognise that one has to try to lead the thoughts of the
child, so that it does not become a limp, weak human being
later, but takes up such mental pictures that lead to a certain
willpower. Someone who possibly believes that by suggestion of
the will the will, and by suggestion of the life of thought the
thoughts are strengthened is on a quite wrong track; he does
not know the weaving and living of the supersensible human
being. Here is a point — and we could bring in countless
ones — where real penetrating into the reality of
existence leads immediately to life praxis. Somebody who wants
to stop at the outer reality resembles a person who has a
horseshoe-shaped piece of iron before himself and says about
it, this is a horseshoe-shaped piece of iron. However, another
says to him, this is a magnet. The former means, I see nothing
of it, I see a horseshoe only, and I want to shoe my horse with
it. — He does not see the magnet. What can the other do
who can add the invisible to reality!
Thus, the world is interspersed with something invisible.
However, everywhere reality is fulfilled with a stream of
existence that one only recognises if one gets a relation of
the supersensible in the human being to the supersensible in
the surrounding existence. The fact that many things make a
particularly unreal impression in our time is due to the fact
that the human beings believe to face the stream of reality
immediately. This should be “a scientific view.”
However, they do not realise what lives in the depths of
reality. Hence, they cannot acknowledge that which weaves in
the human life as something real. Someone who has a recognising
sense for that which goes forward in the present who can
compare subtler, more intimate events to the catastrophic
events which have now become the human misfortune is reminded
very much of how necessary it is just in our time that
understanding of the supersensible relation of the human being
to the world gains ground again in humanity. If you ask
yourself how it has happened, actually, that this understanding
is not there, then you can characterise it in the following
way.
It
is not there. Today people are regarded as especially clever,
and those who are far away from reality are clever in certain
respect. I can call a book in which, actually, from start to
finish no tone of reality is included, and which contains the
knowledge of the whole world, nevertheless, strictly speaking
from its point of view, because it is a dictionary, a
philosophical one: that by Fritz Mauthner (1849-1923, German
author) which is an idol of knowledge not so much of the
experts but of numerous laymen or — if I am not allowed
to say this — “journalists.” However, someone
who approaches this book with sense of reality can get a
peculiar feeling. Start reading any article, read it to the
end: you have turned around in a circle.
It
is, as if you have looked at something that blinded you; then
you turn around and look again. However, you get to nothing at
all. You ask yourself with every article why it is written,
actually? It is to everybody with sense of reality a torture to
read this pretentious book. Nevertheless, it is a very clever
book. I could praise the astuteness, the cleverness of this
book; but a book has come about which reminds you with every
article of the good Munchausen who wanted to pull himself out
of a swamp on his own shock of hair. This book is also typical
for many things that are thought in the present and are done
for a long time, and what removes the human beings from
reality, from the supersensible. However, in this supersensible
the spiritual, the real is flowing. Why did the human being
diverge from reality?
Nothing can face the real Christianity and the real piety more
understanding than spiritual science. However, take the reality
that is often associated with the development of the last two
millennia, there you get stuck into the idea: you have to
search the spirit beyond outer nature, have to consider the
outer nature as something that you must avoid if you want to
get to the spirit. Go back to the older centuries, and you
realise that one withdraws from the outer nature and her
secrets; one looks for other ways and does not look for the
spirit that is spread out in nature. Then natural sciences
came; other necessities appeared to the human consciousness
concerning the concept of nature. However, the former centuries
had made sure not to see the spirit in nature; one wanted to
find it apart nature. Now she faced the human beings and she
was divested of spirit. Now one investigated that nature which
one had divested of spirit. This takes place since four to five
centuries. Because one saw everything approaching the human
being from this spirit-divested nature with a certain
necessity, the human being was also divested of spirit. The
spirit-divested nature became the vampire of the human spirit.
Nature entered in science and her facts became irrefutable. I
have often said that the human beings have to admire the
results of natural sciences; but nature must not be considered
as spirit-divested, otherwise, it becomes the vampire, and one
can no longer find what lives in the human being as spirit.
Then you find what the barrel organ plays. That which the
barrel organ plays is below in the organic. There one grasps
the organic life only, one side of life only, not the other
side that we have taken as starting point today that already
has the supersensible stream in the memory.
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